Teardrops
by Empatheia
Summary: Multifandom drabble collection.
1. Missing the Train

**A/N: **Done for the drabble meme on LiveJournal. This one was requested by **Zipis1**. Her crack-rotted brain comes up with the coolest things sometimes. ;:sticks tongue out at adorable friend:;

**Specs: **Kaede/Jaken. OMFG.

**xoxoxoxoxoxox**

_**Missing the Train**_

**xoxoxoxoxoxox**

They are the left behind.

They are the leftovers. The unnecessary. The redundant and useless. They sit and drink tea and quietly cut their hearts into neat little ribbons with meaningful shapes.

"How many of them do you think will come back?" Jaken asks, wiping his beak.

Kaede smiles sadly and looks at the swirling leaf patterns in the cup. "I know not."

"They won't all come back, you know."

"I know."

The sun dies, and they try not to think of what else may be falling. Seas of blood flow across their vision. Most will live, they think, but it is _so_ unlikely that they all will...

Kaede thinks of Inuyasha, her love that might have been if not for Kikyou's beauty and her own youth, and prays.

Jaken thinks of Sesshoumaru, the cold light of his narrow life, and wishes he could remember _how_ to pray.

They find comfort in each other's company, and are grateful that they were not left alone as well as left over.

The left behind sit, drink tea, and wait for their candlelit world to end.

**XoxoxoxoxoxoxoX**

**A/N: **I actually quite like this one. At first I thought it was going to die a horrible gory death due to the pairing, but it actually turned out kind of sweet. Whaddyaknow.


	2. La Senza

**A/N: **Part of a drabble meme I did over on LiveJournal. This one was requested by **Crysalie**.

**Specs: **InuKag in the mall.

**xoxoxoxox**

_**La Senza**_

**xoxoxoxox**

If Kagome could have traded places with Sisyphus, she would have without a second thought.

_Push rock up hill. Watch rock roll to bottom. Push rock back up hill. I can do that! As long as it doesn't involve...!_

"Oi, Kagome," a cleverly disguised (read: hatted, jeaned, and ponytailed) Inuyasha said, bafflement clear in his voice. "What are _these?_"

Then and there she decided that the day her mother asked her take Inuyasha to the mall again was the day she she committed _seppuku_ with a rusty spoon.

"Get out of here, Inuyasha. Girls only allowed in here."

"What? Then what about that guy?"

"He's allowed. See the girl with him? That's his girlfriend."

Inuyasha regarded the giggling couple for a long moment before returning to stare skeptically at Kagome. "So you just need a 'girlfriend' to be in here? So...why am I not allowed again? You're with me, you're my friend, and you're a girl!"

Kagome turned red as raspberries and sputtered. "Girlfriend and boyfriend mean something else in my time, Inuyasha. They're a special kind of friend, not like you and me. Friends like you aren't allowed in. Only m-m-m-...screw it. Only certain _kinds _of boyfriends are allowed in those stores with us girls."

Inuyasha held up a lacy scrap of black silk that quite obviously covered only relatively unimportant things. Their eyes met over it. "How come I don't get to be one of those special guys?"

_OhgodkillmenowpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohmygodI'veneverbeensoembarrassedinmyentirelifeohmygodsaveme!_

Inuyasha dropped the silk bit and picked up another, this one in red leather. He inspected it curiously. "I like this one. Would it fit you? I'd _love_ to see what this looks like actually on you..."

_Drop dead, dog boy._

"Inuyasha," Kagome murmured, fluttering her eyelashes seductively.

"Yeah?" he answered, preoccupied by his journey across the discount lingerie table. "This place is _awesome."_

"I'm going to _sit _down over here. You should _sit_ down for a while too. Have a break in the _sitting_ area."

_**THUMP. THUMP. THUD.**_

_Hey, that shade of pink velvet looks kind of nice with his hair!_

**xoxoxoxoxoxox**

**A/N: **Is it just me, or did I just make InuKag, aka the SuperCanoners, taste like crack? MWAHAHAHA


	3. Schism

**A/N: **Part of my LiveJournal drabble meme. This one was requested by **Rumdiculous**, and I love her for it.

**Specs:** NarKag.

**xoxoxox**

_**Schism**_

**xoxoxox**

There is a part of me that loves the nighttime best. I think sometimes it's the truest part.

Scratch that. I _know_ it's the real me.

There's a fake me, too. You've probably met her. She smiles like she's happy and has shallow, glimmering emotions that have soap-bubble lifespans. I let her take care of most of our living because she's a much better liar than I am.

We have one thing in common. We both tend to love things that hurt us.

When I'm pretending, when I'm _her_, I love this guy who lies more than both of me put together. He's both bright and dark, and both of those are false. At least I know who I am. He can't say that much for himself. He hurts me because he can, and he feels a little more alive when I'm crying. Bastard. Sometimes I think about dropping the act and telling him who I really am, no pretenses, no costumes. He would be so shocked! The image makes me laugh.

I'll never do it, though. For someone who's not scared of anything, I'm quite the little coward. Ha, ha.

And when I'm not pretending, when I'm not just a pretty two-dimensional doll, I can clearly hear the singing night calling for me. It reminds me of where I feel most truthful and free. When I am surrounded by darkness and blood and pain, I don't have to hold up that glittery innocent-schoolgirl mask with my aching arm. I can be real.

That's why I love him.

Inuyasha is beautiful but fake. Naraku...just is.

I like it that way. I hate lying. Is that so wrong? Everything dies anyway. Everything suffers. Should I feel guilty for not caring who or where the death and suffering comes from? Maybe. Probably. Whatever.

He's calling me again. I can feel it where my wings would be, if I were dead and Christian. Right there between my harshly outlined shoulderblades. You know how you can always tell when someone's watching you? Like that. His eyes, those red-rimmed eyes are always watching me. I shiver and wish for the sun to die.

Can I go? Is it nighttime yet?

**XOXOXOX**

**A/N: **Brr. Kagome can be so creepy sometimes. At first I didn't like this because I thought it was out of character for her, but now I'm really not so sure it is.

As a piece, I like it quite a lot. I think first-person fics are my now favourites to write. Woohoo! I have a specialty!


	4. Hey Diddle Diddle

**A/N: **Written for the drabble challenge I did on LiveJournal. This one is for **Golden Meliades**, or goldenmeliades over there.

**Specs: **Yuki and Tohru of Fruits Basket, friendship.

**xoxoxoxox**

_**Hey Diddle Diddle**_

**xoxoxoxox**

On any other person, Yuki thought, Tohru's personality would drive him to madness in five minutes flat. Tohru's personality only worked for Tohru, and he couldn't figure out why that was.

At the moment, she was elbow deep in slimy garden dirt, doubtless coated in invertebrates and things with many legs. She was singing softly to herself, and had a ridiculous smile pasted on her face.

_No one but Tohru would smile when she's so dirty. _

Yuki ran his fingers along the rough edges of the tree he half-hid behind and watched.

"La la la...and the cat said to the spoon, run away with me, we will be welcomed by the moon...la, la, _la_."

Why was it that her impossible cheerfulness that seemed completely independent of her surroundings didn't grate on him? Any other hyper-active, manically grinning girl-child would have had him running for the hills. Why not her?

_Because her cheerfulness is real, that's why. She doesn't fake happiness so people will love her. Her smile is genuine, her innocence true despite everything that's happened to her. Any other girl like her would just be a cheap knock-off. Tohru can pull off being annoying because she's also real and truthful in every aspect._

"La-di-dai-dah-dum, the moon wept silver tears, the spoon forgot its fears, the dish caught magic in its arms. Ai-lai-lum, lai-lee-dun, eh-lo-yee-fai-lum.

Yuki did not know the song. The realization that she was making up the lilting strains as she went along hit him in the chest for no other reason that it was such a very _Tohru _thing to do. His pale fingers fluttered to his chest and he closed his eyes.

"La-di-dai-dah-hai-lai-lum, the cat and mouse they sat and sighed, and did not fight for one starlit night, oh-lai-dai-dum-dee-lum..."

He found himself caught unexpectedly between a wry smile and burning eyes. Even when she made up silly, wonderful songs that broke his heart, she was always thinking of ending the feud he and Kyou had carefully cared for and tended for the past decade and a half. Perhaps one day she would mean more to them than mutually exclusive victory.

Not today, but her song pushed Yuki a long way in the right direction.

"Mai-lai-dai-nai-num, what the Moon would give would fill an ocean thrice, oh, for the laying down of arms just _once_, oh lai-dai-ai-dah-dum."

_Oh lai-dai-ai-dah-dum. Tohru..._

**xoxoxoxoxox**

**A/N: **I want to tackle Yuki and play with his pretty hair.


	5. Virtuoso

**A/N: **Written for **The Engine Driver **(**horses-and-men** on LiveJournal) because she is one of the loveliest people I know.

**Title**: Virtuoso  
**Series:** Neon Genesis Evangelion  
**Character:** Kaworu (implied platonic Kaworu/Shinji)  
**Rating:** K+  
**Summary:** From outside the walls of time, Kaworu remembers.

XoxoxoxoxoxoX

_**Virtuoso**_

_Thy magic reunites those  
Whom stern custom has parted;  
All men will become brothers  
Under thy gentle wing._

When I came to this broken, beaten world, the absolute last thing I expected was the first thing I found.

Hope.

The others told me before my farewell that Earth had nothing left to give, that it was reduced to sending its children into battle for it. The others did not, of course, mention how soundly said children had defeated them. The children of Earth are fearsome indeed, and none more so than Ikari Shinji.

I knew this before I went, because the others aren't really 'other' at all, just different faces of the same thing that I am part of. We are one, and so I knew everything they knew without them having to say it out loud. A warning would still have been courteous, for all the good it would have done.

Have you met Shinji? If you have, I'm sure you didn't like him. Very few people did. It's very difficult to like someone who hates himself so passionately. If you tried, you probably felt like he resented your goodwill. His self-hatred was spectacular, an art-form, and any intrusion on it was repelled almost as soon as he noticed it. He craved your liking, your love, your acceptance and respect, but in order to let it in he would have had to give up his beautiful negative passion. I, who know him better than anyone, know that it would have taken great pressure to make him do that.

How could I not love something so lovely?

I came down that day (what is a day? what is time? I can't remember, oh, _Shinji_) and found him on a bloodstained beach, the violently dying sun splattering shining gore all over the water and his beautiful face. It was an ordinary sunset, but the look on his face made everything around him a vision of agony incarnate.

I sat on a rock nearby and sang to him. 'Ode to Joy,' perhaps you know it? Beethoven was a true genius. I often suspect he was one of us, a forerunner. It is very seldom true humans create such transcendental things as Beethoven's symphonies.

Shinji sounded like Satie's 'Gymnopedie' to me. If you haven't listened to it, you should. It's remarkable how much those lone notes on the piano can sound like the way loneliness feels.

So, I sang him 'Ode to Joy' and loved him with everything I had. That's what I'm good at, you know. Loving. This world is full of things that tear my love out of me without conscious effort on my part.

Bloody sunsets.

Broken roses.

The way buildings are made of almost-perfect right angles, but still look skewed if you tilt your head ten degrees to the left.

The way declarations of love spoken in Sanskrit caress the ears and fly through the veins like blood is just so much sweetly scented air.

Ikari Shinji and his stunning, almost _sacred_ hate for himself, which was also a form of love and worship for the world around him. He saw such beauty in his surroundings, he could not help but think himself unworthy of them. Ah, Shinji. You were a rare creature indeed. I still miss you and your splintered little world, here outside of time.

Here, so far outside of time that it's forever sunset and forever dawn and forever bath-time and bed-time and death-time.

Remember?

_Yes, even if he calls but one soul  
His own in all the world.  
But he who has failed in this  
Must steal away alone and in tears._

XoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoX

**A/N: **Geep, I _love_ Kaworu. And you, Mai!


	6. Splinter

**A/N: **Written for **Numisma**, my crack dealer. I love you, dear lady!

**Title:** Splinter  
**Show:** Fullmetal Alchemist  
**Pairing:** Ed/Roze  
**Rating:** K+  
**Summary:** Even in London, there were things worth smiling about.

xoxoxox

_**Splinter**_

xoxoxox

There was something about park benches that Ed loved.

London had lovely park benches, lots of them. He loved to sit on them and watch people pass by, strangely familiar yet so completely different because this was a different world, and no matter how hard he tried to forget this was still _London_ not _Central_ and there was no one here for him.

If he closed his eyes he sometimes heard her voice.

Never anyone else's, though of course that made no sense. If everyone had their double here in this world that was simultaneously more dead and more alive than his, then why didn't he hear Sensei's voice, or Colonel Mustang's, or _Al's_?

But he didn't. Only hers, only ever hers.

She was usually laughing, which was nice because it hadn't been very pretty at the end and it could so easily have been screaming instead.

Ed was twenty-seven years old, now, and no closer to returning to his home than when he had first arrived eleven years and two inches earlier. He was still short, but less noticeably so. It was one thing that made him smile, among a crowd of things that didn't.

That way, if he ever met her again, maybe he would at least be able to look her straight in the eyes rather on an upward angle.

(_Father wants me to go back to America. I don't want to take that long boat trip again! Katie, what will I do?_)

Ed smiled and listened. This park bench was his favourite-- he heard her here most often.

(_I tell you, I've never been so bored in my entire life!_)

It was her voice, her voice exactly. He never tired of listening to it, even if it _was_ just a ghost from his memory. It was a damned beautiful ghost.

(_I mean, at first I missed Kane, but I--_)

Ed sat bolt upright and dug his fingernails into the green flaking paint of the bench. _Kane?_

It was a coincidence, of course it was, but it was a very strange one and his heart twisted in on him involuntarily. It couldn't be, it was so close to impossible it might as well be for all the difference there was between 'probably not' and 'can't be.'

(_--got over that fairly quickly. I keep feeling like there's someone else I should be looking for, but--_)

"Roze," Ed gasped, sure now despite all the evidence to the contrary. It was impossible, but it was her and he had to find her.

He stood up and brushed off his trousers. England was a fussy place. It didn't suit him at all.

_Where is she?_

He looked for her distinctive hair, but couldn't see it anywhere. He could hear her voice physically, now.

"--I also feel like someone else is looking for me, and I'm worried he won't recognize me--"

The cobblestones made muted sounds beneath his boots, but all he could hear was her voice.

"--what with this hair. I didn't want to change it, but Father insisted--"

_To what? What did you change it to?_

"--because the pink was too 'flamboyant,' can you imagine?"

There was a steady stream of people passing before him, and her voice was getting louder now. All the heads he could see were blond, dark, or rare Irish red. No pink, and no dark Ishbalian skin. Where, where, where?

"I don't really like this shade of chestnut, but everyone says it suits me so well. I suppose they can't _all_ be wrong--"

Ed clenched his fists in frustration. Eleven years of hearing her voice, and now she was right there in front of him and he couldn't bloody well see her. It was too much to bear, and Ed had always been a man of action whenever cunning failed. "Roze!" he shouted.

It was a hot summer, and his words fell dead on the flat air, but they flew just long enough.

A reddish head turned. "Katie, did someone just call me?"

The dark head next to her also turned, then shook slightly. "No, I didn't hear anything. Are you all right, Rose?"

The crowd was suddenly thinner, as though to pave the way for Edward's feet, but he couldn't move a muscle.

"I don't know," Rose replied. "I feel very strange, like someone's watching me. It isn't entirely unpleasant, though."

"_Roze!_" Ed shouted again, and lifted one foot. It felt like he had the entire world attached to it, like instead of moving himself he was moving everything else around him.

"There! Again! Are you sure you don't hear that, Katie?"

She turned around, and he saw her face.

The old Roze was almost completely gone. This girl was pale and dark-eyed, and her hair was the colour of polished cherrywood, but it was still her. He would have known her anywhere. 

"Roze," he whispered, overcome. It wasn't just that she was someone from his world, someone he knew, though that was part of it. It also wasn't that she was Roze, the person he had almost loved and fallen short of. It was both and more and if he couldn't touch her within the next ten seconds he was sure he was going to fall apart or explode or shatter or _something_.

The world kindly let go of his feet, and he stumbled across the thoroughfare to stand wild-eyed before her.

"Roze," he said.

She looked at him, and he realized inanely that in this world, she was shorter than him by an inch and a half.

"I know you," she said.

"Roze," he repeated stupidly, unable to form any other word but her name. "I'm sorry, Roze, but I really can't--" He choked, gave up, and wrapped himself around her as though she was everything he'd left behind.

She gasped, but did not move away. Her friend-- Katie?-- spluttered and batted ineffectually at his right arm. He almost laughed and told her how little good hitting that arm would do, but he'd forgotten how to talk.

"Roze, Roze, Roze..."

"Who are you?" she said quietly into his chest. "Why am I not afraid of you?"

The tie holding his hair back came undone and gold surrounded both their heads. "It's fine if you don't remember," he said. "We've never met before anyway."

The sun was red through the London smog, red as eyes in Ishbal.

XoxoxoxoxoxoX

**A/N: **Sorry it took so long, Numi!


	7. Night in Shining Shotglasses

**A/N: **Requested by **Rumdiculous**.

Characters involved: Irvine from FFVIII, and Miroku from Inuyasha. Rumi, you are a genius.

**xoxoxox**

_**Night in Shining Shotglasses**_

**xoxoxox**

It was after the seventh shot that Irvine decided to introduce himself. Any man who could down the hard stuff like that and remain perfectly clear-eyed and steady-handed was worth talking to in his book.

He slid into the conveniently vacant stool next to the stranger and held out his half-gloved hand. "Irvine Kinneas, sharpshooter, at your service," he said, and took pleasure in the whisky-smoothness of his own voice. Alcohol made him sound like sex. That was the main reason he drank.

The other man, dark-haired and possessed of mischievous, spinning-deep black eyes, looked up in surprise. "Sorry, did you say something? I couldn't hear you over the band."

Irvine happily repeated his introduction.

"Ah. Miroku, pervert monk, nice to meet you."

There were several things wrong with that, but Irvine now had nine tequilas swimming in his intestines and couldn't quite put his finger on them. "Just Miroku?" he said finally.

"Just Miroku. My family name is a deep dark secret."

Irvine thought that was downright nifty. He had a thing for secrets and painful pasts. "Cool." Pause. "Hang on, did you say perverted? What a coincidence! Me, too!"

Miroku raised a quizzical eyebrow. "Would I be correct in assuming, in that case, that you know...ahem...where to go in this strange city?"

"But of course, my good man! Follow the leader!"

That was a night Deling City...or more specifically, the eleven showgirls of the Neon Moogle, would never, ever forget.

**XoxoxoxoxoX**

**A/N: **I may have to write more for this because...Irvine. And Miroku. _In the same place_.


	8. Namae

**A/N: Nelson Bannaba, **this one's for you.

Yes, I'm still working on the original request-a-drabble meme. From months ago. PROCRASTINATION FTW. Almost done now, at long last. XD

**Specs: **Sesshoumaru & Inuyasha, filial. A story told in honourifics.

**xoxox**

_**Namae**_

**xoxox**

When Inuyasha was young, he called his brother _nii-sama_, and meant all of the respect inherent in the title.

A round-faced angel of a child, it was difficult to hate him. When he smiled,it was toothy and exuberant and completely oblivious. When he cried it was loudly and without restraint. He did not know the meaning of 'diplomacy,' or 'manners,' or 'rules,' for that matter. He simply lived with all the joyous abandon of his heart.

Sesshoumaru loved him.

It was completely against his will, for he had nothing but contempt for Inuyasha's mother and found children distasteful in any case. However, there was something irrestistably beguiling about Inuyasha's enormous golden eyes crinkling at the corners when he was happy about something.

Sesshoumaru never smiled... but his eyes betrayed him sometimes by answering the warmth in his little brother's.

He thought nothing of leaving, the first time.

xoxox

When Sesshoumaru returned ten years later after experiencing the life of a soldier, he found a surly teenage Inuyasha who didn't love him anymore.

He tried to pretend that didn't hurt, but since he rarely had occasion to lie, he failed in silence and left again to hide the evidence written on his face. He had no way of knowing that _leaving_ was what made Inuyasha decide not to love him anymore.

After that, Inuyasha called him _nii-san_ with a grumble, and the respect was gone.

No one but Sesshoumaru noticed.

xoxox

When Inuyasha's mother died, Sesshoumaru did not attend the funeral.

When a weeping and bewildered Inuyasha came to his door once the rituals were concluded, he made his first conscious bad decision of his life and turned him back. What could he possibly say to a grief-stricken youth that would not sound trite? Nothing. There was nothing to say, and he could not bear to listen to Inuyasha fill the silence with his pain.

So he turned him away, trying not to see the betrayal in his little brother's eyes. It was not his fault, he told himself. He was not the right sort of person to give comfort to anyone.

The _shoji _door made no sound when it slid shut before Inuyasha's dejected face, but Sesshoumaru heard the sound of finality anyway like the deep, dolorous knell of a gong.

Inuyasha left the following day, and did not come back when the sun set.

When next they met, Inuyasha called Sesshoumaru by his name.

**xoxoxoxox**


End file.
